You have earned yourself a new fan. I loved Return of the Maltese Falcon.

Several years ago, I convinced my local Big Read committee to adopt The Maltese Falcon for their community wide project. I was a teacher, and I wanted my students to love all genres of classic lit as much as I do. The closest thing we had to The Maltese Falcon in our curriculum was Edgar Allan Poe short stories. Those are great, but I wanted them to read something more modern, too.

My students studied the novel and then hosted a successful community event where they shared their Maltese Falcon-related research to the public in interactive presentations. That project continues to be one of my most favorite teaching moments.

Thank you for revisiting this fun story. I recently reviewed it on my Substack page. I hope you have time to check it out. It’s linked here.

Deborah Linn McNemee
KeepingClassics.com

Sam Spade is a sexist pig.

We know this, right? He’s been a sexist pig since 1939. A good mystery is timeless, but we all can agree a man like Spade should leave his sexist behavior in the past.

Or maybe not because earlier this year, MWA Grand Master Max Allan Collins brought him back, problematic attitude and all, in the much anticipated Return of the Maltese Falcon. Collins has earned the title of MWA Grandmaster from a lifetime of great writing, such as Road to Perdition, and his work on well-known series like Dick Tracy, Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer, and even the Batman comic book.

Sam Spade was originally brought to literary life by Dashell Hammett in the 1930 classic detective novel, The Maltese Falcon. Sam Spade became the template for all the cynical, hard-nosed detectives that came after him. As problematic as these womanizing anti-heroes are, the biggest problem of all is that we like them, especially Sam Spade.

I’ll give you a moment to gasp and fan your face. You know it’s true. Readers, and probably the general public, love a bad good guy, especially when paired with a femme fatale and a wisecracking secretary who calls him out.

But–and it’s a big but–today’s culture will cancel writers for creating these characters just to make ourselves feel righteous.

If I weren’t already salivating at the thought of a sequel to Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon, I would have picked up Collins’ book simply out of cancel culture curiosity. How would Collins handle writing a womanizing, sexist character like Sam Spade and a setting like 1928 San Francisco for someone reading him in 2026?

I am an author of retellings, so I know the dilemma. In my current work in progress, I’m navigating one of Mark Twain’s characters, Joe. You know him with the proper adjective Injun placed in front. The retelling needs the character and his storyline. It definitely does not need the moniker. It’s not a name I would ever consider using. It would never pop into my author brain, but it’s in the original. It must be dealt with. It’s delicate work to honor the character and the writing and not insult my readers or myself.

So how does Collins deal with one hundred year old norms? Brilliantly. He nails the sexist detective. And he does it with the help of a woman.

Return of the Maltese Falcon starts two weeks after The Maltese Falcon ends. Brigid O’Shaughnessy and Joe Cairo are languishing in jail for murder, double-crossing, fraud, and a myriad of other shady behaviors. Sam Spade, with his blonde Satan-esque face, is seated at his desk, considering a Christmas tree standing where his former partner’s chair used to be. It was erected by Effie Perrine, his secretary, who enters on cue with her “thin tan woolen dress” clinging to her as her heels clack on the linoleum floor.

We’re barely off page one and the only femme who’s not fatale is already having her way with Sam Spade. He’s not crazy about the holiday decor, but, in some ways, he’s crazy about Effie Perrine, so the tree stays. He knows this and doesn’t fight it as lights and tinsel and ornaments show up throughout the book.

Collins doubles down on Perrine’s power by giving her the last dig in this opening repartee. Perrine introduces Spade to a new client, Miss Smith, saying, “‘You’ll like her…She’s female and young.’”

Okay, so we like Effie Perrine. She is spunky and smart and takes Spade’s machismo in stride. But what about Spade? How does Collins nail him? And why do we like it that he does?

Writers of retellings have the benefit of ready made descriptions. In a Cereal at Midnight YouTube interview, Collins explains that even though Sam Spade has made appearances in short stories and movie adaptations, none of those likenesses could be represented in The Return of the Maltese Falcon because those works aren’t in the public domain. So the blonde hair, the V-shaped facial features, and yellow-grey eyes all come from the original novel. Hammett describes Spade as looking “rather pleasantly like a blond satan”.

This blond Satan idea is the seed that grows into our bad good guy for whom we can’t help cheering. Traditionally, Satan is a red dude with black skin or red horns where hair should be. We don’t think of him as blonde. We certainly don’t think of him as pleasant. But these are Hammett’s words that Collins runs with. It’s as if Spade is the middle ground embodiment of the little angel on one shoulder and the little devil on the other.

That combination continues as Spade smirks and smiles and calls his secretary and every other babe in the story honey or sweetheart or rattle-brained angel. In the original, a frustrated Spade rubs his face into Effie Perrine’s hip for comfort and in the same conversation discusses how he won’t marry his dead partner’s wife just because he was hooking up with her before the poor son-of-a-gun died. Somehow, we don’t hate him for it. We scowl with Effie Perrine as Spade then walks out the door to visit Miss Wonderly for what will become more than strictly a business call, but we don’t hate him.

Throughout both novels, we watch with voyeuristic delight as Spade plays every girl he calls on. Most of them are much younger, but it still doesn’t seem to upset us. Even Collins’ 2026 audience won’t protest too much. Maybe that’s because those honey-sweetheart-angels answer their hotel room doors still damp from a shower, barely covered with thin, see-through negligees and look up at him with doughy eyes and pouting lips. They flaunt their feigned vulnerability because they are playing him right back.

The truth is that Hammett’s Brigid O’Shaughnessy and Collins’ Rhea Gutman and Corrine Wonderly don’t only bring the game to the party, they write the rules, too.

Before you come at me with a lecture on it’s always wrong for older, wiser men to take advantage of younger women, let me concur. It’s wrong. Always. In real life.

Fiction is another world. What we abhor in real life, we often excuse in fiction. It’s a tough pill to swallow, but swallow it we must because Sam Spade is not the only devil getting away with it. Think of James Bond. Think of Indiana Jones when he walks into Marion Ravenwood’s pub to be welcomed with a punch to the face. She adds a certain desperation to her voice. “I was a child,” she says, “I was in love.” He responds with a barely considered, “You knew what you were doing,” and she drops the subject. By the end of the scene, she’s partnering up with him, and by the end of the movie, they’re in love again.

And the crowd goes wild.

Collins is a bit smarter. In that same Cereal at Midnight interview, Collins makes the statement to never write down to your reader. Always assume they are smarter than you. He does not assume the reader will so easily forget and forgive Spade’s escapades, so he brings on women who deserve comeuppance way more than Marion Ravenwood ever does.

Collins also says that the mystery of his novel is not the Maltese Falcon. The mystery is Sam Spade, himself. Who is Sam Spade, really, and what’s he gonna do?

Even if the statue was Hammett’s MacGuffin first, and Spade was his mystery, Collins enacts the concept perfectly. In The Return of the Maltese Falcon, we also have the return of Sam Spade’s libido. He seduces not one, but two young women. Just like in The Maltese Falcon, the women and the reader think maybe he’s gone soft-hearted. Maybe he’s finally met the dame to crack his gumshoe code.

And who knows, maybe Sam Spade isn’t even sure he hasn’t it. In The Maltese Falcon Returns, there’s a point when Effie Perrine watches one of those young ladies walk away and shudders. “‘I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to help you after all, as close as she was to you.’”

“‘She was,’ Spade admit[s]. ‘Too close’”

The point is that Sam Spade does have a code. It might not work for everyone, but it works for him. He doesn’t carry a gun in case he’s tempted to use it. He basically tells it straight. He keeps his word. And he likes women. He especially likes women who think they can pull one over on him, but he never likes them well enough to let them. Smart ones like Effie Perrine who tell it straight, too…well, he more than likes them. He respects them.

And maybe that’s why we like him.

Ultimately, Sam Spade doesn’t get a pass without the women in his world. We don’t mind him blowing off Iva Archer because she’s awful. The femme fatales with all their aliases and alliances are even worse. Their codes make his code seem darn near gallant.

There is one woman, though, who is everyone’s saving grace, Effie Perrine. She’s so sharp, so witty, and so good that if she can see something redeemable in Sam Spade, the sexist pig, we can forgive ourselves for seeing it, too.